The College Fix

They accidentally hacked an expensive medical condition, too

All-night parties and snoring roommates are the bane of college life for many students.

For a trio of friends and engineering classmates at the University of California-San Diego, those annoyances were their ticket to success, aided by the school’s invention lab.

Their Kickstarter campaign for “smart” earplugs raised nearly six times their goal of $100,000 and inadvertently lowered the cost of treating an expensive medical condition.

“Hush” earplugs have a tiny internal speaker playing neutralizing sounds that can block out snoring or loud noise from neighbors, according to ABC 10 News.

Because they are wireless, the earplugs can connect to cell phones. Users can then count on hearing their alarm through the earplugs, and also fall asleep to “white noise, ocean waves, rainfall” and other soothing sounds, the Hush website says.

Daniel Lee, a former student, told ABC 10 he came up with the idea while trying to sleep but could still hear the sound of parties next door. He was afraid that with regular earplugs he might miss his alarm in the morning.

“We were just like, oh, we’re a bunch of college students with loud, snoring roommates and loud neighbors,” Lee said of himself and his co-founders, current students Daniel Synn and another Daniel Lee. “But there are a number of demographics who are very passionate about it.”

One of those demographics is sufferers of tinnitus, a loud ringing in the ears. Typically devices to manage tinnitus cost thousands of dollars, but the Hush earplugs do the same thing for $150, creating an unexpected market for the device, the co-founders told ABC 10.

More than 4,000 people pledged to the Kickstarter campaign to get their own Hush devices. The first batch rolls out in May. The campaign hit its $100,000 goal in just five days.

“It’s really the story of me just having an idea and bringing together a couple of talented friends to try and build a company out of it,” Lee, the former student, told The College Fix via email.

Helping students who put in the effort to be entrepreneurs

The Hush founders are part of the university’s Moxie Center for Student Entrepreneurship, in the Jacobs School of Engineering.

The center, which has been operating for two years, mentors students and helps them take their creative ideas and “dream, design, [and] develop” them into real products, according to the Jacobs School website.

The center’s Moxie Incubator features lab workspaces, equipment, mentors and funding for student entrepreneurs.

The Hush creators “were a team that came into our incubator program a year or so ago. We provided them with facilities, resources, and advisers,” Jay Kunin, the center’s executive director and mentor for the Hush team, told The Fix in a phone interview.

The Moxie center caters to students who want to be entrepreneurs, Kunin said. Many show up with ideas but do not follow through because of the amount of work required.

“But then there are some who will be really seriously committed and excited,” Kunin said. “They will carry through with their idea.”

Hush is the second Moxie team to have a successful Kickstarter campaign.

The first was EcoQube from Aqua Design Innovations, which more than doubled its $39,000 target a year ago to make “aquaponics” devices that both filter aquarium water and grow house plants.

“A successful Kickstarter is a good indicator for our product,” Kunin told The Fix. “Hush had a lot of technical challenges,” but that’s par for the course with the first iteration of a product. “Students with raw ideas and a commitment and passion to execute, that’s where we help them.”

College Fix reporter Samantha Watkins is a student at Point Loma Nazarene University.

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IMAGES: Hush Technology